Quarrelling Mpumalanga alliance partners are coming to share the same room once more.
This time they will be discussing the problems of the poor together.
The office of the Mpumalanga provincial ANC secretary, Mandla Ndlovu, this week announced the coming weekend as the weekend of the provincial economic summit.
A resolution to convene an economic summit was taken by the provincial ANC congress that elected chairman David Mabuza for a third term late last year, in order to discuss these ‘intensely’.
Spokesman Sibusiso Themba said: “The conference had noted that certain sectors, especially mining and manufacturing were shedding jobs at alarming and concerning manner and that attention had to be given to this sorry economic reality”.
Themba said the economic summit is scheduled for 23 to 25 September 2016 at the district head offices of the eHlanzeni municipality in Mbombela and was being convened by the provincial alliance partners of the ANC – Cosatu, SACP and Sanco.
This comes after an Alliance Summit on 2 and 3 April 2016 that also resolved that such summit be convened to address the economic problems of poor people.
The Alliance Summit was convened by the national leadership of the ANC to mend sour relations between the personable leader of the ANC, David Mabuza, and the quite influential leader of the SACP, Bonakele Majuba, in the province.
But Majuba had since described relations mended by the summit as ‘suspicious’, saying it was only meant for the public image of the ANC towards the 3 August 2016 local government elections.
SEE ALSO: Inside the SACP Mpumalanga elective congress
“I want to join my counter-part and the leader of the ANC in the province, comrade DD Mabuza, that together with comrades from Cosatu and comrades from Sanco we must sustain what we started at the Alliance Summit,” Majuba told delegates during an SACP provincial congress that elected him for a fourth term two weeks ago.
Sources inside the ANC on Tuesday told 013NEWS that regional alliance summits would follow by November this year across the province to “strengthen the alliance further, engage and implement regionally the resolutions taken by the provincial Alliance Summit”.
READ ALSO: Ndlovu tells SACP congress: “We must implement alliance summit resolutions now”
Themba said during the Alliance Summit they also resolved as alliance leaders a need to convene an economic summit “to intensely look into the economic reality and discuss many options that could assist to address the situation”.
Themba said the matter that gives alliance leaders stress was the issue of the “unhealthy rising unemployment”, Themba added: “The Alliance Summit felt that there wasn’t sufficient time at the summit to intensely interrogate the issue and appropriate resolutions and that an economic summit be convened so that all alliance partners can agree on a collective and singular provincial economic blue-print”.
(edited by MLM)
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